Streamline Your E-Course Production: Create a Video Lecture Outline

Our fourth post, in the Streamline Your E-Course Production series, is how to create a video lecture outline before you start filming.

This simple task really helps me to stay on track while filming and reduces the amount of ‘takes’ I have to do.

Just imagine that you are about to film a video outlining 5 blogging tips. Let’s also suppose that you decide to ‘wing it’ and not write down any notes because you have your notes stored in your head!

As you begin filming the video, you realize that you aren’t really sure how to start it off. Sometimes the start is the hardest part!

So, you end up having to re-film the video several times, just to get it the way you want, without forgetting any points you wanted to make.

This scenario could have been avoided if you had taken a few minutes to make some hand-written notes.

So, whether you are producing a screencast or an introduction video facing the camera, I’ve found that having an outline in front of me really helps.

In this post, we are going to look at:

• The benefits of outlining each video lecture
• What to include in an outline
• An example outline from one of our courses
• A template that you can use to create your own outlines

Filming a video may be relatively easy for some people who feel very comfortable with the idea of being on camera. But for others, it may be a real struggle to record yourself.

Either way, having an outline about what you will talk about should help you produce videos more efficiently and with greater professionalism.

So, here are some benefits of writing an outline for each video lecture:

• Helps keep you on track, stay focussed and avoid rambling – no tangents here!
• Helps with any nerves you may have while filming
• Makes your videos more professional if your points are clear and well laid out
• Helps to bring in more students when you build a reputation of having clear, well-laid out video lectures
• Helps you plan and organize your thoughts from one video to another so as to avoid any unnecessary redundancy among your course lectures
• Improves post production editing – you can easily edit out the ‘breaks’ created when you look down at your notes in between sections of text to collect your thoughts

Here are some tips for what to include in your video lecture outlines:

• Include exact wording for your video introduction and conclusion
  • This helps to keep videos consistent and makes them more professional because you are including a clear introduction and conclusion statement (or “call-to-action”) in every video
• Point form the body or main part of your video content
  • What are the key points you want to make? Are you showcasing specific tips?
  • What extra information do you want to make sure to remember to mention?

• Write out any instructions to yourself
  • If this is a screencast demonstrating how to use software, for example, you may want to remind yourself of specific features to showcase or how to do something with the program
• Include any reminders to yourself
  • Do you want to gesture a certain way or point to something at a certain place in your video?
    • This is useful if you want to do some post production editing to add text to your video that you can show as you are speaking to the camera
    • Using a Green Screen set-up behind you really helps to produce videos like this

Since I always feel that showing what I use may help someone else, here is an excerpt from one of my video lecture outlines using a template I created:

You’ll notice I developed this outline as though I was speaking the words out loud while showing my audience how to create a clickable button interaction using PowerPoint. This excerpt is from our course Enhance Your Presentations: Easy PowerPoint Animation Tricks.

You can choose to write out your video outlines in a detailed manner like this, or you can choose to make them more succinct and only write down key words to jog your memory.

Either way, find out what works best for you. I find that writing out how I would explain concepts in detail helps me, even if I don’t say it exactly how I have it written, during filming.

I’ve uploaded a blank template to our resource library entitled Video Lecture Outline Template. You can use/adapt this template to help you create your own video lecture outlines. Just click the link below to grab it from our ECA Free Resource Library:

So, let’s recap!

Here is a summary of our fourth step to help you streamline your e-course production:

• Creating a video lecture outline before you film your screencasts or other types of videos helps:
  • Keep you on track
  • Reduce nervousness
  • Increase professionalism
  • Grow your audience
  • Improve organization
  • Improve post production editing
• Make sure to include the following in your outlines:
  • Exact wording for video introductions and conclusions
  • Bulleted list of what to cover during the main part of your video
  • Instructions and reminders for yourself while on camera
• If you’d like a copy of the template I use for my video lecture outlines, grab a copy from our ECA Free Resource Library.

Well, that’s all for today.

Leave a comment and let me know if you have any questions about our fourth step to help you streamline your e-course production.

Stay tuned for our next installment of the Streamline Your E-Course Production blog series…

Thanks for stopping by,

Heather

CEO and Founder of e-course alley